The Food Court
by can-it-fly
Summary: In which Emma was put into foster care and Cas lost his memory again. / Not on hold anymore.
1. Chapter 1

If she were to give credit where credit was due, Emma figured she'd have to start with the bus driver. At the time, though, she just wanted to get off the bus.

She'd gone to Target that Saturday evening, to buy a warmer coat and some microwavable meals; she was on the cheapest meal plan but her metabolism still stayed higher than the Empire State Building, so she scarfed down snacks between classes whenever she could.

Her shopping done, she'd boarded the bus back to campus and settled into the long ride. It was the last bus of the evening, and sparsely populated.

Around ten PM they rolled into the first stop on campus, and the only other passengers – both students, both freshmen – disembarked. It was just Emma and the driver, and the camera monitoring the bus was broken.

She pulled the cord for her stop but the driver cancelled it. She pulled it again and again he cancelled it. She watched him zoom across campus, past the unlit academic buildings and through the west dormitory hub.

They were at the edge of campus. Emma knew that the bus depot was somewhere to the west of her college campus, but she doubted the driver would go directly there.

For probably the first time in her short life, Emma was glad to be an Amazon.

The driver went up the hill, and turned off the main road and onto a beat-up side street, with warehouses on both sides. He was focused on the road ahead, fortunately: visibility was a bitch thanks to the snow.

Emma put on her new jacket, with the tags still attached, and stuffed the old one into her backpack with the cheap meals. She stepped down to the side doors and, after pausing to make sure the driver hadn't noticed the movement, yanked the doors open and threw herself out.

* * *

><p>She landed on asphalt. It was white, she noted, but the snow only formed the lightest layer over the road.<p>

Pain shot up her left arm.

She heard the bus skid on the wet road behind her. She shoved the pain to the back of her mind, used her right arm to stand up, and ran towards the main road. She vaguely recalled crossing the street as to be under the street lights.

* * *

><p>She reached the main road and stood for a moment, to take in her surroundings. There were no cars to stop for help – not even a street sign to use when she called 911.<p>

If she called 911.

On the catercorner was a storefront with a small parking lot, and two car lifts off to the side.

Car lifts. It was a mechanic. Dean had taught her a little about cars. "Always double-check their prices," he'd said. "Trust their judgment but don't be afraid to look for a better deal."

Emma looked both ways across the street like Sam had mentioned offhand once, and stumbled across the street. Behind her she heard the squealing of tires on the road.

* * *

><p>She entered the mechanic shop at a run; she shoved the door open so hard it almost snapped the door closer clean off the door. She skid to a stop near the counter, gasping for breath and clutching her left arm. The two employees sitting at the counter stared.<p>

"Umm," she said, "Hi."

Before they could respond, she added, "Rough part of town, huh?"

After a moment, one of them said, "The food court's downstairs."

"What?" If Emma tried, she could focus her eyes on the guy that spoke. She barely had the energy to do it.

"They're downstairs. The restaurants. Google Maps says the entrance is up here but it's not. Are you okay?" The guy stood up. _No_, she thought. _Don't_.

"What? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. So how do I get down there?"

"Usually we'd say to take the stairs outside," the other employee said, "But they don't de-ice them nearly enough." She and her colleague conferenced for a moment. "We have some back stairs you can take down. You should probably rest first, though."

"Oh." Emma realized how much of a mess she must have looked. "Thank you, but I need to get down there. Now. Where are the stairs?"

Once she saw the stairs she thought about reconsidering their offer of a chair and a glass of water. But she was an Amazon, and Amazons would not be defeated by staircases. Spiral staircases. Steep, narrow spiral staircases made out of metal that she almost slipped on the moment she stepped down.

Boy, she was a having a hell of a night.

She gave an encouraging nod to the mechanics above her. They returned to the shop and closed the back door behind them.

It was just her, the cement walls, a few yellow lights hanging from the ceiling above, badly painted railings and those stupid stairs.

She almost tripped over a dozen times, but she made it down to the bottom at last. It took her longer than she'd have liked to admit.

She took a moment to rest, then opened the door with one hand and stepped out into the store.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a 7-11. Emma hadn't been in one of them in ages.

"Can I help you?" someone asked. A guy. She forced herself to relax, and turned around to face him.

It was a store employee; his badge said "James".

"Hi. Yes. Uh, I mean, no. I'm fine."

The man took in her appearance. "The mechanics let you in. You should stand by the hot dogs to warm up."

"What?" She turned to look around the store. The hot dog rack was next to the cashier's counter. "Oh. Thanks."

She peeled her new coat off in front of the hot dog rack. Her left arm was stiff from the cold, but it was more than that. She couldn't move it without pain shooting up to her shoulder.

Emma folded her shirt sleeve back to her upper arm. Sure enough, her arm past the elbow with swollen; she could barely flex her wrist.

She cursed silently. She was lucky that Amazons healed quickly, but fractures still hurt like hell. She'd need pain meds and possibly an x-ray.

Emma needed her father.

"Son of a bitch," she muttered. The employee James, who had returned to his station behind the desk, looked up.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"Uh, maybe. It's probably just a fracture, but I'll need to get an x-ray."

"There's a bus to the hospital that comes in a few minutes."

She smiled softly. "I've had enough of buses for today. But thank you." She took out her phone and found the contact she wanted.

"Here, let me take a look." James reached for Emma's arm. She didn't notice him; she was staring into the phone screen, debating whether to call him.

She did notice when the pain dulled.

On instinct Emma snatched her arm away, but not before she saw the blue light coming from James's hand fade.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

He looked at her; she looked at him.

Emma smiled. "Thanks for your worry, but I'll be fine." She pulled a pack of gum from the candy racks and tossed it on the counter. "I'll have a hot dog, too."

* * *

><p>After scarfing down the hot dog – <em>boy<em> was she hungry – Emma left the 7-11 and walked across the common area to the pizza place. It had chairs and tables and pizza, and at that point she wanted all three. It was also empty, which was a huge plus.

The only employee present sat behind the register, reading a book. She cleared her throat to get his attention.

"Hi. Two slices, sausage. And a large drink."

"Sure." He put down his book and moved to cut the pizza. She glanced at the book, then looked again: _Chemistry: A Molecular Approach_.

"You're in Chem 1 too?" she asked.

"Huh?" The employee returned with a pizza-shaped box and handed her a cup. "Yeah. Bachova?"

"Maxfield."

"Cool. Tuesday morning lab?" The guy punched the purchase into the register. "Seven sixty-two."

Emma took out her wallet and handed him a ten. "Wednesday afternoon. Maxfield loves to go on about the inventors of all the lab equipment."

He laughed. "Bachova doesn't care. Sometimes she even forgets to collect our write-ups. Two dollars and thirty-eight cents is your change. You want a receipt?"

"Sure." Emma collected her food and her empty cup. "Thanks."

"Have a nice night."

She dumped her things down on a chair and ate the pizza quickly. According to her phone it was almost eleven PM.

* * *

><p>Emma finished her food at the same time the pizza place closed. She watched the lone employee closed the register and package up the leftover pizza.<p>

He stopped at her table with the pizza box in his hand as Emma packed her bag and struggled with her coat. "Is your arm okay? Are you walking back to your dorm alone? I can walk you back."

"No – yeah, I'm fine," she replied curtly; she didn't appreciate boys "looking out for her".

"Oh, well, okay." He walked across the common area and handed the box off to James in the 7-11; then he walked back to the pizza place and disappeared into the back.

She refocused on getting her arm through the sleeve. James's little magic trick had dulled the pain a little, but it still hurt like a bitch.

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to walk back with someone else.

She collected her bag and walked back to the 7-11. James looked up when she leaned against the counter.

"What d'you think?" she asked, and nodded her head at the pizza place. "Is he okay to walk back with?"

"Damon's a nice young man. I'm sure he won't do anything untrustworthy."

"That's not what I meant." Emma smiled knowingly.

James stared at her, comprehension dawning slowly on his face. "I don't know what you mean," he stammered._ Yeah, right_.

"Yeah, you do, James." She gave him a sharp look; _You're lying_, she thought as forcefully as she could. He winced: he heard her. She _knew_ it.

He broke off eye contact and squinted at the pizza boy, newly emerged with his jacket and backpack. "He hasn't done anything unspeakable, if that's what you want to know. He's not thinking of doing anything, either."

_Sam said I had to get used to boys_, Emma supposed.

She smiled kindly back at the 7-11 employee. "Thank you, James." She walked to the doors facing the road, where Damon stood contemplating the snowfall outside. She supposed he was waiting for her to go ahead.

"I changed my mind," she announced. "The road's slippery and half of the streetlights are out."

"Cool," Damon replied. "Here," he added, and handed her his pocketknife. "In case anything happens, you should probably have it. I'm in Dalton."

"Southeast hall," she said. "Thanks."

He opened the doors and they stepped out into the snow.


	3. Chapter 3

"_Fell, fractured arm. Need x-ray. Doctor contacts?_"

"_I'll come down when we finish this job._"

That was not what she wanted from him.

* * *

><p>Emma had started coming to the food court regularly, Damon noticed. She'd sit at a table near the windows overlooking the park and take notes for hours. It was his job to kick her out if she didn't order something every hour, but he let it slide.<p>

She'd barely said anything when he walked her home that night – just curt answers and an offhand "thank you" when he left her at her dorm. They were both tired, he supposed, and it looked like her arm was hurt; true enough, she showed up the next night at their mutual dining hall wearing a sling.

Despite the sling, Damon had gotten the impression that she could seriously hurt someone if she wanted. Looking back, he'd handed her his pocketknife just so she wouldn't feel uncomfortable with him.

It was now Thursday evening; Damon had worked up the courage to sit with her in their dining hall twice. She'd barely spoken then, either.

He shifted on his makeshift seat behind the cash register, running his hand down the back of his calve; it was instinct now, to feel for his hidden silver knife.

The iron one was hidden by his uniform's high-waisted pants.

Also unconsciously, Damon's eyes slid to where Emma sat. For the first time, someone else was approaching her. A tall man, white, putting off the same dangerously uninterested vibe as she did.

He dropped his bag in the chair and walked over to the pizza counter.

"Hi."

"Hello, sir." Damon stood up. "What can I get for you today?"

"Uh, I'll have…a large drink and…" The man scanned the menu hanging from the ceiling. "How about, three slices of sausage pizza and a large caesar salad."

"Coming right up." Damon rung up the order, the man paid, and they both waited for Damon's coworker to fill the order.

He glanced again at Emma's table, but she was gone – her coat, her backpack and herself. The bag the man had also disappeared.

The man also noticed; he looked back, saw the empty table and left the building with his order.

Damon was confused: was this a drop? Drugs, maybe. Or weapons.

"I'm going on break," he told his coworker.

* * *

><p>Sam found Emma leaning against his car.<p>

"I didn't want you to come," she told him when he walked up. "I told you I didn't want you to come!"

Sam handed her the pizza and leaned on the car next to her. "The doctor I know around here doesn't like to see unfamiliar faces. I'll be out of here as soon as you get the x-ray."

Emma scowled. Sam frowned. "What's the problem?" he asked. "I swing by every so often, it's part of our deal. You've never had a problem with it before."

She scoffed. "Right. The deal you forced me to take."

"Well, it was either that or _kill_ you, so you're welcome that we even _gave_ you a deal."

Emma looked away and muttered, "You should have killed me."

"What did you say?"

She turned to face her uncle. "I said, instead of pistol-whipping me that night in Seattle, you should've shot me!"

"You don't mean that," said Sam. "Look, I know you haven't had the best-"

"No, Sam, you don't know the half of it!" Emma realized she was shouting, and tried to lower her voice. "I grew from a baby to a fifteen-year-old in two days! Two days! Do you know how painful that is? Do you know how painful it still is?"

Sam opened his mouth but closed it quickly.

"The Amazons – they had spells! They had potions and spells and they knew how to deal with the growing process! You forced me to make a deal with you and stuck me in foster care with shitty healthcare – do you know what my pain level is constantly? You have no idea how damaged my body is!"

Emma had kept all the pain and anger inside for five years. She hadn't realized how easily it would come out.

She stuck her wrist, where the Amazons had branded her with their mark, out at Sam; she covered it with a bracelet but he still knew what it was. "This thing. The brand. They can use it to track Amazons, did you know that? I've killed maybe ten Amazons since I was born. All of them came looking for rogues and all of them found me. This thing _burns_ every time they cast a tracking spell!

"But d'you know the worst part, _uncle_? Huh?" Sam shook his head. "The worst part, Sam, is that my brain is hardwired to hate men! Every time I see one of you I reach for my knives; every time you speak I have to stop myself from punching you! I am programmed to kill you, Sam! This – this stupid curse!"

She didn't know how else to express her anger without hurting her uncle, so she turned and punched the car. Dean she could hurt, Dean she could anger; after all the first time she'd seen him she tried to kill him. But Sam…she felt guilty even entertaining the thought, and she hated that.

Emma looked back up at Sam to see his reaction; she had created a pretty impressive dent in the car.

The pain in her hand broke through her anger.

"Let's go see the doctor," Sam finally said.


	4. Chapter 4

Emma was a monster. Normal-looking, makeup-applying, quiet Emma was a monster.

Damon remembered well what his mother had always said: "Monsters kill, so we kill them. No exceptions."

When the police officer had delivered the news along with her belongings at his father's doorstep, he'd given them his "sincere condolences". Damon wanted to tell him to shove it.

When his father thanked the officer and expressed his sadness over his "mentally-ill ex-wife", Damon _had_ told him to shove it.

He flipped through her journal now, alone in his dorm room with only his desk light on. She had every monster indexed alphabetically, with separate sections for weapons and hunters. Out of habit, Damon turned to the L section for monsters: Leviathan, she had scribbled at the top of the page. "_Black goo_", "_eat humans with huge mouths_", "_dismember body and bury pieces_ _separately_", "_don't eat corn syrup_" – the last one was doubly underlined. Her last sentence in the entry read: "_No weaknesses, no way to_"

_Kill_, she had meant to write. But that was when Damon guessed the Leviathan had gotten her. All that it had left behind was a fragment of her head, enough for a DNA sample; enough for the coroner to pronounce her dead. "No one could survive with that much of their skull missing," the officer had also said.

Damon took a swig from his water bottle. It was a trick he'd picked up from his mother: hide the alcohol where people wouldn't guess it. The metal made the alcohol sharper, more bitter, and Damon had grown used to it like that.

College was a waste of time. A waste of money, too. Damon could be working a real part-time job, not the shitty shifts at the pizza place, and hunt too. He could use the rest of the cash from that college fund his parents had set up so long ago. He could buy silver bullets, machetes, any and all of the weapons his mother had described. He could get an old car and learn how to fix it up to hide knives and guns and holy water.

But he wasn't. He was going to college, and you couldn't hunt if you were in college. That was why his father made him go.

Damon finished off his alcohol, and his thoughts turned back to Emma. Maybe he wasn't as restricted as he thought.

* * *

><p>The doctor diagnosed Emma with a radial arm fracture and a couple compressed nerves. He gave her Percocet for the pain and showed her some arm exercises to do to prevent her arm from going stiff. In all, it took maybe two hours.<p>

Sam drove her to the street closest to her dorm and parked the car. She swung the door open but he said, "Hold on a sec."

She scowled and kept the door open. "What."

"Did you really mean what you said before? Do you really wish I'd killed you?"

Emma shut her eyes and thought about it. "Look. I'm glad you didn't leave me high and dry after not killing me. But…" She sighed. "I wasn't lying, y'know, about the growing pains or the mark. I've gotten the urge to kill guys under control, but this this…it's not a fun life."

Sam was quiet for a while; Emma closed her door and stared out the window at her dorm. The light was on; her roommates were home.

"Do you want to leave here?" Sam finally asked. She turned and looked at him. "I mean, you don't have to stay. I know we couldn't look after you before, but the Leviathans are gone and we have the bunker now. You could go there."

She wasn't expecting that. Or maybe she was. "I…I'm-"

"Look, I know you don't like Dean," her uncle barreled on, "And he doesn't ever mention you, even when I do. But you're his kid, and you're family, and you have just as much right to the bunker as we do."

Sam was rambling. Emma watched him peter off. "So…yeah," he finished.

They sat there in silence. Emma didn't know how to respond. Finally she settled on: "I think I found an angel."

* * *

><p>Damon stood in the shadow caused by the streetlamp light being cut off by a corner of the dorm that Emma lived in. He wasn't drunk enough to let himself be seen.<p>

He watched a car – an older-model, maybe stolen, definitely the car Emma had gotten into earlier in the evening – pull up to the curb and park. The person riding shotgun opened the door, but closed it a couple minutes later.

It had to be Emma and her monster friend.

After what felt like forever to slightly-drunk Damon (but according to his watch was only fifteen minutes), Emma reopened the shotgun door and stepped out. A moment later, the driver got out too. Even with the few streetlamps illuminating the area, Damon could see his face.

He finally recognized him.

Emma and the man talked for a minute, then she walked off toward the dorm building, and he drove off in his stolen car. Damon crouched down in the shadows to hide himself as she passed. He heard her swipe her ID card and open the door.

Now only if Damon could remember who that man was.

* * *

><p>Emma pulled Damon up from where he laid in the shadows, half asleep.<p>

His first drunk thought was that he was dreaming.

Then he realized how cold he was.

"Why are you following me?" demanded Emma. "Why are you here?"

"I dunno why – you're a – how'd'ja-" he slurred.

Emma punched him in the gut to sober him up.

"You think I didn't notice you outside the food court? And when I got back here, you were hiding behind the corner!"

"You're a – punch – monster-"

He collapsed, unconscious.

* * *

><p>Sam drove slowly back to the oddly-shaped building with the food court; he wanted to go faster, but he was convinced that he'd end up speeding and get pulled over. Dealing with cops outside of cases was a bad idea.<p>

He parked the car in the same spot he had before, and walked across the street. The temperature outside had plummeted and by the time he entered the building his hands were freezing.

Sam walked into the 7-11 and wove through the aisles, stalling for time. Nobody was at the checkout counter. He blew hot air into his hands, and rubbed them on his pants.

He picked up some granola bars and poured himself a large cup of coffee, enough to keep him going till he got back to Kansas. He stopped in front of the industrial refrigerators and contemplated buying some juice.

After a couple minutes, Sam heard a door open and shut twice. He glanced toward the noise, then looked again. The lone employee had returned, and he was carrying crates into the store.

_Crap_.

* * *

><p>Emma returned to her dorm room half-an-hour later and dumped her stuff on the floor. Her roommates might complain the next day but she didn't care.<p>

Her phone buzzed loudly. She took it out and checked her messages. The screen glowed too brightly in her dark room.

"_You were right_," it said.

A moment later, it buzzed again:

"_Keep tabs on him. Don't say anything. Don't tell Dean_."


	5. Chapter 5

"Ey, dude, gettup."

Damon hand flew under his pillow, for the knife he kept strapped to the bottom on the pillowcase; there was nothing there.

His mouth tasted like blood and puke, a nasty combination if there ever were one. He opened his eyes and rolled onto his back.

On his bed. In his dorm room.

"This girl brought you in, maybe ten last night," said one of his roommates – the one who'd shaken him awake. Sam? No, Alex. "She said she'd found you near her dorm, dead drunk. She got the room number from your key."

Damon nodded his head and looked at his other roommate, he was grinning wickedly. "_Dude_, you couldn't make it to midnight, you couldn't even make it past _ten_."

"Mark," said Alex. "Let off him." He dropped a wet towel onto Damon's face. "I checked your schedule, you've got lecture in an hour."

_Sam_. "Oh. Thanks," Damon muttered into the pillow. "Thanks."

He sank his head back into the pillow and tried to fall back asleep. The water seeping into his almost-shaved head was a good balance against the headache that was kicking in. _Sam_.

Alex poured cold water over Damon's body, and that put an end to any hopes Damon had of sleeping through his hangover.

* * *

><p>Dean looked up when the door slammed shut.<p>

"You get lunch?" he called out.

"What? When did you ask me to get lunch?" Sam called down. He shouldered his duffel bag and walked down the stairs.

"When you left, which was way too long ago." Dean gestured to a stack of paper on the world map in front of him. "Dude, I've got like fifteen cases. You can't just take a two-day leave of absence like that."

Sam reached out, slammed Dean's laptop shut and dumped his duffel on top of it. "Hey!" protested Dean. "What gives!"

"We're not doing this again, Dean."

"Doing what?"

"You know what I'm talking about, stop pretending you don't." Sam walked up the steps into the library.

Dean sighed and watched his brother get a beer from the refrigerator. "She hates my guts," he called out, "And she'd rather never see me, she told me herself. Honestly the feeling's mutual." He nudged the duffel off of his computer and opened it; Sam walked up, took his bag and dumped it back down on the computer. Dean didn't bother protesting a second time.

"She's your daughter, Dean."

"Sammy, I don't want to talk about it."

"Well, tough. You're not Dad, you don't make the rules around here." Since Gadreel had possessed him – and been kicked out, it was a _long_ story – Sam had taken to standing over Dean, to remind him: _If you wanna be brothers, you have to stop acting like you're my parent_.

"Oh, and you do." Dean, as usual, met the constant reminder of his lack of authority with a glare and a challenge.

"Yeah, when I'm busting my ass looking after my niece, I do! She fractured her arm, by the way. The doc said it'd heal in a month or two. Not that you'd ask." Sam walked around the map table and sat opposite Dean. "I don't care if you don't want to see her. She's your daughter. You could at least give a crap when she asks for help. You could at least ask how she's doing."

They glared at each other for a moment.

"Fine," Dean conceded. "How is Emma doing?"

"She's doing okay, though apparently Amazon brands are a nuisance and the growing pains don't go away."

"What?"

Sam got up again and walked back into the library. "Yeah, it turns out you're not the only one who wished I'd pulled the trigger back in Seattle. The brand that Amazons have, it's also a tracker. And, growing fifteen years in two days? Not exactly relaxing." He reappeared with a pile of books.

"So…so what?"

Sam dumped the books on the map table. "So if you're not gonna deal with her, you might at least help me help her."

Dean took a book off the pile and inspected it. "Awesome. What are we looking for?"

"Ways to strip the Amazon curse." Sam walked back to the library and collected another stack of books.

"Sam, we've got cases!"

"And you've got a daughter. Now, read."

* * *

><p>Damon's headache wore off by the time his lecture finished. He trudged back across campus to his for an hour break before he had to go work.<p>

Why didn't she kill him?

The question had been bugging him since he had finally woken up, after Mark poured the ice water on him. Monsters, especially the ones living incognito, covered their asses. Once he saw her punch a hole in that car he should've been dead.

A better question was, what was she?

She had superstrength, that much was obvious; he'd inspected the bruise covering his stomach in the shower. If she killed on a cycle she was very discreet.

_Sam_.

The name popped back into his head. Why was he thinking of it?

Damon reached his room, dumped his bag on the ground and pulled out his mom's journal. He turned first to the monsters section, but there was nothing about a monster with only superhuman strength.

So he flipped over to the hunters section, where his mom had kept pictures of hunters with their names, roaming areas and contact info. There he was, under W: _Winchester, Sam_. White, longish brown hair, sitting next to his brother Dean.

Damon read Anna's notes on the brothers.

_Holy. Crap._


	6. Chapter 6

Emma woke up Friday morning with a splitting headache. She took a couple Percocet and went to lecture. The same lecture Damon was in. She'd never noticed him before.

She sat in the back, per usual, and watched him doze off twice before finally putting his head down halfway through class.

He snored, so loudly that the professor had to raise her voice and half the students were trying to contain their laughter; the other half had given up.

Emma didn't find it funny.

The professor let the lecture out early and before Damon's friends would wake him up, Emma walked down the stairs and slipped a piece of paper into his notebook. Then she pinched his arm and joined the stream of students exiting at the top of the hall.

She returned to the food court that afternoon. She liked the atmosphere, and besides Sam had told her to keep her eyes on the 7-11 employee.

The building was built in stacks on a hill: the highest layer was the smallest, with the autoshop. A couple stories down was the food court, with the 7-11 and the pizza place where Damon worked, the Subway and the Thai take-out place that was always deserted. Below there was some kind of doctor's office, and at the bottom was a fancy restaurant.

On the other side of the street was a park cut level at the bottom of the hill. Emma liked to watch the kids climb the rock wall that cut into the hill, even icy as it was in the winter. It was more relaxing than Chemistry and European History, in any case.

Damon had taken her order. He said absolutely nothing, just rung up the order she'd placed every day since last Sunday, taken her money and given her change.

He moved as if severely bruised around his chest. Emma tried to contain her satisfaction.

* * *

><p>Damon turned the paper over in his hands and watched Emma stare out the window, onto the park. He wondered if she'd found his note.<p>

The Winchesters were famous in hunter circles for…well, for everything. They'd been killed, possessed, sent to hell and back and lost their whole family, and yet they never stopped hunting. Never mess with the Winchesters, that was the rule.

At least, that was what his mom had written.

She'd also kept a log of her hunts, which Damon had avoided. All those times she'd gone away on business out of the blue, all the times she'd skipped birthday parties or picked him up three hours late from soccer – he didn't want to know. He didn't want to know how much she sacrificed for her job.

But that afternoon he looked in the log, and there it was, almost five years ago:

_April 5__th__, 2012, Broad River, GA: 3 reported disappearances, victims all worked at sugar processing plant. Winchesters (see: W) also investigating. Black goo found in victims' houses._

Unlike every other log entry, she hadn't written down the monster culprit. And five days later that police officer had knocked on his father's door and told father and son they'd found a skull fragment in Georgia.

He couldn't kill Emma because she knew the Winchesters; he wanted to kill her even more because of it, too.

But first he wanted his knives back, and that meant following the instructions on her piece of paper. He'd already slipped his reply into her pizza box.

* * *

><p>Damon's shift ended at 11 PM, when he closed the shop up and walked home. Emma had already checked with James, the angelic 7-11 employee: he didn't ask why Damon wanted to kill Emma, nor why Emma was completely unworried that Damon wanted to behead her, but he did offer to walk her home. She politely declined and exited out onto the deck, to walk down the staircase and into the park.<p>

Emma didn't know much about angels, past what her first year religion class (which she took because Sam suggested it) had mentioned: soldiers of God, appeared in dreams and in blinding light, delivered news to unsuspecting humans. They guarded good humans and smote the wicked ones, and were righteous, unfeeling beings.

Apparently the truth wasn't as simple, but all Dean would say on the subject was that they were dicks, and Sam made her memorize warding sigils and told her to be wary of blue light.

Emma walked out onto the park grass, still spotted with clumps of snow. She wandered around for a couple minutes, and eventually decided to stand in the corner where the building met the rock wall, past the glass walls of the ground-level restaurant.

_He's closed the store_, James whispered in her mind. _Are you sure you don't want me to take you home?_

"Thank you, James," she said aloud, "But I'll be fine."

She heard a door open and close quietly, forty feet above her head. _Game-time_, she thought.

* * *

><p>"I'd like my knives back," Damon said loudly, in the middle of the park.<p>

"You tried to kill me with them," replied Emma. She let Damon walk to her.

"Yeah, cuz I saw you punch that car," he said. "You're a monster."

"And so what? You think you can kill me by taking off my head?" she replied.

"If that doesn't work, a heart-shot should do it." Damon stopped ten feet away from Emma.

She smiled. "You're not gonna kill me."

"I'm a hunter, I kill monsters."

She shook her head. "You're no hunter, you're a college kid, just like me. If you were a hunter, you'd know how to kill me."

His jaw tightened; she was right.

She walked forward. "You want to kill me, but you don't know how. I could kill you, but that'd bring attention and I don't want that." She held out her hand. "Truce?"

He glared at her hand and said nothing; his huge breaths made icy clouds in front of Emma.

Eventually he extended his hand and they shook. "Fine. My knives?"

She turned and walked away from the corner. "They'll be in your room."


	7. Chapter 7

**Sorry for the long wait, I got busy with college and all that fun. Chapters should be coming out at a more regular pace now.**

* * *

><p>A nest of vampires had moved into town.<p>

The signs were obvious: scattered reports of travelers gone missing and "mutilated human corpses" showing up halfway across state. Two students going home for the weekend never showed up, and grief counselors wandered around campus for the rest of October. In all, seven people in the area fit the pattern, with a couple other unidentified mutilated corpses that Damon ruled as inconclusive.

Damon's mom had never seen a vampire, and the lore on them was varied. All she had written about them was the basics:

_Rare. Nocturnal. Victims must ingest blood to become vampire. Superstrength. Kill by decapitation._

It wasn't much, but it was everything that Damon needed to know.

He spent three weeks in October combing the houses and warehouses at the edge of town during the day time, skipping a couple lectures and accidentally missing an in-class test. That would've earned him a tongue-lashing from his dad, if he knew. But he didn't, and Damon wanted to make sure it stayed that way.

Damon doubled down on his search of the nest and worked overtime at the pizza restaurant; if he saved enough money up he could rent a car for a couple weeks.

* * *

><p>Emma's mark began to burn a week after Sam left.<p>

She walked around the campus a couple times before her work-study began, covering her wrist in snow and taking leftover Percocet. Sam's doctor had warned against taking too many of them but Emma's Amazon body had an amazing metabolism and the pills barely made a dent.

She made her tail within five minutes.

Emma entered the library, greeted the two librarians and signed into her work-study. She dumped her bag in the staff room and grabbed a cart of books to reshelf.

The librarians left her alone in the archives, and she liked it that way. Once the sole male librarian had tried to find her, hadn't announced himself and was still unaware of how she'd almost jumped him behind the German Literature section.

She returned to the main reading room to grab her iPod. She swiped her ID to reenter the archive but she didn't hear the door click closed.

There it went.

She shelved the books alphabetically, first-edition textbooks and foreign language translations of classics. The archive was arranged like a maze, with paths cut off by bookshelves and long hallways connected by zig-zagging routes. The History sections were especially confusing. Emma loved it.

The burning of her wrist brand intensified.

Game time.

She ducked into the West African History stacks, which wrapped around the Middle Eastern History section and connected to it by a couple small holes in the shelves.

Amazons muted their footsteps by walking on the outside edges of their shoes, but if you listen closely you could hear the tell-tale padding of their sneakers; Emma had learned it three years ago, with the seventh Amazon she'd killed.

She turned into the Middle Eastern History section and crouched low behind a shelf with large books. The woman on the other side moved slowly around the hallway and inspected all of the shelves.

She withdrew two of her knives and prepared to throw them. She didn't like to get her hands bloody.

Her cellphone vibrated. _Crap_.

The books behind her blasted off the shelves.

* * *

><p>Emma stood over two dead, mangled bodies lying on the floors of the archives. Her knives dripped a deceptively heavy stream of blood; she'd actually killed them with her hands. Their skulls and neck bones were crushed. She'd learned how to minimize blood spill.<p>

The flash of regret faded quickly; Emma had lost her guilt over killing her sisters long ago.

The archive had a back exit to the dumpsters; she hotwired one of the librarians' cars again. Old Mrs. Booker never noticed a weird smell coming from her trunk, nor that her car freshener trees would randomly be replaced.

She dumped their bodies separately, about two counties over. She smashed in their faces and mutilated their arms so the burns wouldn't be recognized.

Mrs. Booker never noticed the miraculously full tanks of gas, either.

* * *

><p>Damon found the house in early November. It was one of those perennially-for-sale buildings a couple towns over, in an old blue-collar neighborhood. It looked just like Damon's house back home. He'd finally saved up for a crappy rental motorcycle.<p>

He'd come back on a Friday night, when his roommates were out drinking and wouldn't notice any bloodstains on his clothes at three in the morning.

* * *

><p>Emma had left off monitoring Damon a few days after she'd picked his door's lock and slipped the knives under his pillow; she'd planned to keep an eye on him longer but her Amazon problem had taken priority.<p>

She didn't think about him again until he sped past her on a bike on campus. He'd hidden his knives well but she could see them strapped to his leg, out in the open like an idiot would do.

He must've found the vampire nest. All he probably knew was that they'd be killed by decapitation. He was going to get himself killed.

She felt an odd kinship with the monsters, but Damon's death would only embolden them, and the last thing she wanted was hunters in her town.

_Just great_, she thought. _Babysitting the baby hunter_.

This was not how she wanted to spend her weekend.


	8. Chapter 8

Emma hotwired a car.

Dean had showed her how to do it one summer when she was between foster families. He'd also taught her basic hand-to-hand fighting and made not-so-concealed jabs at her mother. She already knew how to fight from the three Amazons she'd killed the months before. It was the last time she'd seen her father; the get-together was Sam's idea and it hadn't ended well.

One of her regular foster-brothers liked to steal expensive cars; she had picked up the habit too, but preferred older cars. They would drag-race late at night and return them in the early hours of the morning. They did it for six months, until Paul was caught and sent to juvie.

Emma, with her good grades and her traumatic past that woke her with nightmares, was never suspected of helping Paul.

She kept jacking and crashing cars on her own until when she won a full-ride scholarship to the University of Colorado. She'd called Sam, he'd congratulated her, and then Dean had taken the phone and told her to stop stealing cars, that wasn't why he'd taught her to do it.

Emma hung up the phone and punched the windows out of the car she'd boosted from a parking lot. She walked back to her foster home with bloody knuckles and glass shards in her shoes. Nobody at the house noticed.

* * *

><p>Emma hotwired a car.<p>

It was a Friday afternoon in early November. Emma had monitored Damon for a few days, watched him go back to the vampire nest and leave his scent over the whole place. He was so screwed, he had no idea.

She had checked with James, who told her that Damon planned to "do it" that night after closing the pizza place. Neither of them mentioned what "it" was, but they both knew. They knew that each other knew. She was glad that James didn't press the issue.

Damon was alone at the pizza place. They exchanged two slices of sausage pizza, a large soda cup and $2.38 in change for a ten dollar bill without saying a word, and Emma settled down in her regular corner. Sam called her moments later.

"Yes?" she answered.

"There's a nest of vampires in your area."

"I know. I noticed. I found them."

"We can, uh, get someone to take care of them if you want?"

Sam liked to leave decisions up to Emma; Emma didn't like him to do that.

"I'll handle it," she replied eventually.

"Right. Did you get my text?"

Emma bit back her angry retort. "Yeah. Do whatever you want, you won't find anything."

"Well, we've actually-"

She hung up. She didn't want to hear it.

Emma woke with a start. Someone was shaking her, why was he shaking her. "Emma!" he said, "You need to wake up!" She looked up but her eyes weren't working properly, he was white, she could stand up, everything was white, his hand was on her face, she was falling, falling, falling…

James took his hand off her forehead a moment later. "Is that better?"

Emma breathed in deeply, in and out. She squeezed her legs to check that they weren't numb, like that time in twelfth grade with the Amazonian toxin.

She opened her eyes.

The ceiling lights blared, forced Emma to shut her eyes again. "What was it?" she asked.

"Some kind of plant-based drug," James said. "Strong dose."

"He would've wanted me knocked out for longer," she muttered.

James asked, "Why didn't it? You were waking up when I found you."

She opened her eyes and grinned. "You've read Damon's mind, I'm a monster. What time is it?"

"Just past closing. Maybe 11:15."

"Shit," she said. She grabbed her bag and stood up. The ground swayed beneath her, and James held her shoulders to keep her from falling.

"How much of it is left in me?" asked Emma.

"A little, it should wear off quickly, your metabolism's very fast," James told her. "Emma, how did you know I could read minds?"

This was not the time.

"Look, I know, you want answers, now's not the time, I've-"

"You have to save Damon Williams from the vampires, I know," he finished. "Do what you have to do, you'll tell me after."

"Thank you," she breathed, and ran out the door.

* * *

><p>Emma hotwired a car.<p>

She burst out of the nest house with Damon slung over her shoulders. The blood from his head – his shredded chest – the long gashes on his legs – it all dripped down her back and her arms. She felt oddly comfortable being covered in blood.

She dumped Damon in the backseat of the old Volvo and turned to face the vampires. The spell bags she'd placed strategically around the house had slowed them down but only long enough for her to put Damon down.

She closed the car door behind her. "So, boys, what's the problem?"

"That's our dinner in your car," the leader said, and smiled. His fangs were covered in blood; Emma could tell from the moonlight they reflected.

She smiled. "Sorry, but this one's mine."

Another vampire laughed. "He's a hunter, you're a hunter, Mick why haven't we killed them yet?"

Mick flexed his muscles. "Good question."

They attacked.

Despite lore to the contrary, vampires did not have superstrength; that, however, was the only advantage Emma had over them. There were three males on the lawn outside, with three to five others inside. At least two of them were female, and from the misogynistic talk she'd overheard from staking out the place they'd be easy to convince to leave. That was good.

She punched Mick in the gut first, sending him halfway across the yard. His companions charged her together, heads down to get more speed. That was their mistake. She met their heads with her hands, gripped and twisted. Vampires could still function with broken necks, but it was uncomfortable and besides, she'd sent them sprawling.

Emma grabbed her machete from where she'd left it lying on top of the car, and walked to the closest vampire. She knelt down on his chest and grinned down at him; he stared back up, eyes wide.

"See you in Purgatory," she said cheerfully, and decapitated him.

Mick and his crony were up and running by the time she stood up. She wiped her mouth to get the blood off, but it only made it worse.

She hit Mick at a run and knocked him down, slashed with her machete and turned to the other vampire. He bared his teeth but turned and ran back into the house.

Emma pulled a match from her pocket, lit it on the roof of her mouth and dropped it on the ground. It lit the trail of gasoline she'd poured around the house before charging inside to rescue Damon. She'd done it because of something Dean had said in passing: "Best way to get rid of someone? Burn 'em. Burn 'em till nothing's left but ashes, and burn the ashes too."

The house was in the part of town worst-hit by the housing bubble of 2007, and it had never really recovered; there wasn't a living soul – and Emma used that word liberally – for three blocks. The house was wooden and probably had twenty different safety code violations, including no fire detector. The vampires' prime real estate was their undoing.

The fire spread quickly from the ring around the house to the inside, and Emma stood outside the side entrance she'd left clean of gasoline. On second thought, the fewer vampires that existed, the better: the women inside would die too. Emma's mercy only went so far.

She picked up her machete and waited.

* * *

><p>Emma hotwired a car.<p>

Once the vampires had burned to a crisp – she'd tossed the bodies outside into the house – Emma returned to her car to check on Damon.

_Crap._

The gashes on his legs were almost bone-deep, and the blood was quickly clotting, leaving the tissue exposed to the air. The skin on his chest was barely held together, and his head…Sam had said that head wounds always looked worse than they were, bled more, but – this was bad.

Really bad.

She obeyed every traffic signal, all the speed limits, until she got to the highway; that was when she hit the pedal and didn't look back. She was trying – and failing – to ignore the whimpers coming from the backseat.

She contacted James once she was at the edge of town. _James!_ she thought, loudly. _Top of the hill!_

He was there. The autoshop had closed but he let her in, carrying Damon like those movie posters, with the brawny, pathetically overmasculine heroes carrying their dead girl toys. She set him down on the floor and stepped back. She was shaking, she realized. She'd never been shook up by the Amazons.

James knelt down next to Damon, who'd stopped moaning a few minutes before. Something else Dean had told her: "If they're making noise that's good. If they're not, don't bother praying to God. He left a long time ago."

"I take it the vampires did this to him?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said quietly. She found a chair and sat. "Can you fix this? Can you fix him?"

He wouldn't look at her. "First, some questions."

"James, dammit, I know what I said but he's going to die!"

"I know. But I've been helping you for a while now, I deserve some answers."

Unbelievable. Of course he wanted something, they all did. "After!"

"No. Before." He looked at her, dead in the eye. "How do you know I can heal people? How do you know I read minds, and _why_ can't I read yours?"

She sat, stunned. She glanced down at Damon, and back up again.

_But Sam said-_

"You're an angel. Your name is Castiel. You know my dad, Dean Winchester. You took over Heaven and then ousted the King of Hell, opened Lucifer's Cage. Then you disappeared. Now," she pointed to Damon, "_Fix him_."

James's – _Castiel's_, whatever it was – expression changed – clearer, more focused. Scarier, Emma thought. She'd never felt more human, more perceptive, than in the shop at midnight with an angel and a dying hunter.

He held his hand over Damon and it began to glow; Emma was too tired to react to the high-pitch whine that accompanied it. He lingered over the chest for a few seconds, then moved onto the legs, and finally the head.

Emma slid off the chair and inspected the hunter. "It's not – you didn't fix it."

"I did enough," the angel replied. "It drained my power, temporarily. He'll live."

She looked back at Damon and heard a rustle; James was gone.

_Focus, girl, focus. You're an Amazon, you can fix this._

She stood up, collected Damon and walked back to the car. The hospital was five minutes away, driving.


	9. Chapter 9

**Mistranslations happen when you use Google Translate, especially at 11:30 PM when all you want to do is go to sleep. The real translation is "_Gift of the goddess Harmonia, who we serve_". (Thank you maxiefae for pointing it out.)**

* * *

><p>Damon woke up Sunday morning.<p>

His father was shouting at the officer outside the door, something about police response time and crime on the college campus. Damon couldn't tell exactly what he was saying, but he wanted it to stop. He tried to tell his father to stop but nothing came out. He breathed in with his mouth but that made the pain worse; his throat was raw, scratchy, rough.

He found the call button and pressed it. Was he supposed to keep pressing it down or let go? If he let go maybe they'd think it was a mistake and ignore it. He wanted to talk.

"You can let go of the button now," a man said. Damon tried to open his eyes but the light hurt, too. He turned his head away from the window to get away from it.

The nurse sighed and pried the call button out of Damon's fist.

"Are you awake?" he asked. _I should say yes_, Damon thought. _Yes_.

"Is he awake?" another man asked. Damon jerked his head, he didn't want him here.

"It looks like he was for a moment, but he's probably asleep again," the nurse replied. "We'll reduce the pain meds and…"

The words floated away, echoed in Damon's mind. He tried to hold onto them but they kept leaving, coming and going. He recognized some of them, little snippets and phrases.

He heard a metal sound, sliding, not that bad but not nice either. Any light filtering through his eyelids disappeared, left completely; his mind was all dark now.

Damon let go and fell asleep.

* * *

><p>Emma couldn't focus on her homework.<p>

She sat at her corner table in the food court with a history textbook open and the worksheet sitting on her lap. It wasn't hard at all, but she just couldn't focus. Every few minutes she'd glance at the 7-11, to see if it was James's shift yet, or at the pizza place, to check if Damon was watching her.

And then she'd remember.

For the first time ever, the lack of men was disturbing. Well, the two of them. It was different.

Around ten she bought a Dr. Pepper from the 7-11 and doubled down on her work. She finished quickly, and as a reward checked the state news sources for any supernatural activity.

Her phone buzzed: another text message from Sam, probably. He'd been asking questions about Amazon traditions and biology since mid-November; apparently he was looking in the Men of Letters' collection for ways to un-Amazon people.

She'd officially disavowed his search after her uncle told her he'd roped Dean into it, too. As much as she disliked her father, she didn't want to cross him, either.

Emma took out her phone and typed out the text "_Ghoul problem in Telluride CO. Better use of time._"

She stared at it for a while, then pressed send. The only thing Dean loved more than he disliked his daughter was a case.

Emma gathered her things and walked to the new 7-11 clerk, who she knew from her Religion class. "Are you ready?" she asked him; he replied with a grunt and muttered something about how the next shift's employee was still in the backroom. She watched him disappear into the back.

After Damon's mugging off-campus, the college had "strongly suggested" that students going off-campus do so in pairs. Emma didn't want to make anyone suspicious so she approached James's replacement and suggested they pair up.

She leaned against the wall and replayed that night in her head: She'd picked a spot under a streetlight, so they wouldn't miss him, and called 911. "_There's been an attack_," she's whispered into the phone, not completely faking the fear and exhaustion. "_He's in bad shape,_" she added. She told them the address, repeated how badly hurt he was, and signed off with, "_I – I can't stay, I have to go_."

The operator had said "_Ma'am don't_-" and Emma had disconnected.

She left the car at the autoshop, carried Damon to the sidewalk, and hidden until she saw the ambulance.

The 7-11 attendant reappeared with his backpack and his coat. "We going?"

She forced her smile. "Yup."

* * *

><p>Damon woke up Monday night. He let his eyes adjust, and once he saw that his father wasn't in the room he rang for the nurse. She made him do the routine movements and answer the usual questions: how much pain is he in, where is it, what do you remember – the usual. When they were done the nurse gave him water and said she'd get him some food. He was starving.<p>

He told her not to call his dad but she didn't comply: he arrived within the hour.

"What happened?" he asked as soon as he entered the room. "The cops – they said you were mugged?"

So he was playing the _concerned father_ card.

"Uh, yeah, I don't remember much," he said. His dad touched one of the bandages on his face, and he winced. "It's kinda a blur. I was walking back from my shift and-"

"You were off the main road," his dad corrected.

"Oh, I guess? I don't…"

"You don't remember, I get it. Your injuries look like you got attacked by a dog or-"

"Dad, _I said_-"

"Mr. Williams, Damon needs his rest," the nurse interjected.

"Just a few more minutes," he replied. "I'd like to talk to my son alone."

The nurse glanced at Damon, who stared aggressively at the window curtains. "Okay," she said, "But just a couple minutes."

Jason Williams waited until she closed the door.

"Did you actually get mugged?" he demanded. "What were you doing on that street?"

Damon was a complete idiot, thinking his dad ever played the _concerned father_ card.

"Dad, _I don't remember_," he said. "I can't remember anything past nine o'clock. The last thing I remember…" was drugging Emma.

"Was what?"

"Was giving this girl pizza. Look, dad, I wasn't-"

"But you were planning to-"

Damon gave up. "It's my life, dad, I can do what I want."

"I'm paying for your life, Damon-"

"Yeah and I didn't want you to!"

"Mr. Williams," the nurse said, "Your time's up."

Damon's dad glared at him. "We'll talk about this later."

Sure they would.

* * *

><p>Sam texted her on Tuesday morning:<p>

"_What's the exact phrasing (in Greek) of the meaning for the symbol? Also: Christmas._"

"_Believe it or not they don't teach us every little detail in induction. Christmas is based off the Roman celebration of Saturnalia_"

"_Not what I meant. Do you want to stay with us for Christmas_?"

"_Δώρο της θεάς Ἁρμονία αυτή που εξυπηρετούμε_"

"_What is that?_"

"_Exact Greek Text_"

"_So you'll think about it?_"

She didn't reply.


	10. Chapter 10

**I owe you guys a big apology, and an explanation.**

**I stopped writing temporarily after my coursework load got too heavy…and then it got heavier…and then there was a concert…and then finals…and then moving home and unpacking…and then a conference…and then summer classes…so basically I've had no time to sit down and work on this chapter. It includes two scenes that were really hard for me to write, and that's another reason I put off writing them.**

**So if the narration sounds off, if the pacing is weird or the voices out-of-character, that's why.**

**I'm sorry it took me this long to pick it back up.**

**Till next time (and hopefully that means this time next week), the author.**

* * *

><p>"Sam."<p>

Sam turned around. Cas stood at the top of the stairs.

Castiel.

Sam wondered how he got his memory back, whether Emma had told him or Sam's own visit had triggered his memory. Both had happened before, and he still didn't knew which would work better, not with Cas.

However he had regained his memories, there the angel stood, with a trademark Dean Winchester upset frown and his arms crossed tightly across his chest.

This was not gonna be fun.

A lecture class from Sam's days floated into the front of his mind: Psychology in Criminal Trials. If a suspect crosses his arms, he's trying to hide something, but if a witness on the stand crosses his arms he's uncomfortable and you should change your questions. Either way, there's something he doesn't like, and you use that.

It occurred to Sam that angels had more in common with humans than they liked to admit.

"Cas," he replied. "How are you?"

"I'm doing much better with my memory recovered."

"That's – uh, that's good. Dean's not here," he added.

"I know. I waited until he left."

"Oh." _Crap_. "Why?"

"I wanted to ask you a couple questions."

Sam thought for a second, then turned and walked into the library. He grabbed two beers and returned to the map room. He put the beers down at his side of the map table and slid one to the other side. "All right," he said. "Let's talk." Sam opened his bottle of beer and looked up when the other bottle slid back to him.

Cas still stood at the top of the stairs.

_I thought his grace was weaker_, Sam thought.

"You're grace is stronger than it was," he said.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Sam sighed; he'd been deluding himself, thinking they could avoid the topic of his deception, his purposeful omissions.

Sam generally avoided deception like the plague since Ruby. He'd only slipped up a handful of times, and none of them had ever worked out well. Dean, on the other hand…well, deception had been Dean's shtick for so long that Sam had grown used to giving him crap for it, forgetting how easy it was to start lying. How hard it was to stop. How quickly the house of cards fell down.

And for all that Sam preached honesty and straightforward conversation, not telling Dean about Cas – he was alive, he had amnesia again, he was helping Emma – was such a relief that he hadn't thought twice about it.

"You left a big mess when you disappeared," he said slowly. "It took us almost four months to get a handle on it. You made holes in Purgatory, we're closing them but a lot of monsters got out. We still don't know where Michael and Lucifer are."

"Is Michael still using your brother's body?" asked Cas.

"Yes. It's messy up here and we're really busy. I didn't think you should-"

"Should what? Help fix it?"

"Yes. I mean, no, I didn't think-"

Cas moved – flew, however angels did it – to stand at the other side of the map table. His face was calm, expressionless, dead. Like angels were. His arms were still crossed.

"You didn't think I could help."

His voice was just as dead as his face.

"No – yes – Cas, can you just let us take care of it? This always happens, every time you try to help-"

"What? What happens?"

"You screw things up!"

There, he'd said it. Cas always meant well but he always, always screwed things up on his own. It felt like a relief, finally telling the angel why Sam had lied to him, lied to Dean, had told Emma to withhold the truth from him.

How far had he gone, Sam thought, that he'd only trusted the monster with the truth?

Emma wasn't a monster, he reminded himself. She'd been living as human for years, and she hated what was supernatural about her. She wasn't a monster.

Cas grew quiet, squared his jaw like he always did when he was faced with his own shortcomings, and let his arms hang down.

"I know. I know I do."

"Cas?"

They hadn't noticed the door open and slam shut, hadn't seen Dean standing at the top of the stairs, stunned. They'd been so intensely arguing about him that neither of them thought he'd actually show up.

Neither of them knew how long he'd been standing there, either.

Cas turned toward him, stared at him for a long moment. Dean stared back and, not for the first time in Sam's life, the words _get a room_ floated across his mind.

He looked back at Sam, who wouldn't meet his eyes. Sam heard the rustle of wings, and the angel was gone.

Dean, though, wasn't.

* * *

><p>Emma walked up to the nurse's station. "Hi, I'm here to see Damon Williams."<p>

The nurse put a clipboard on the counter. "Sign in."

Emma printed her name, time and reason for visit. Talk on campus was that he'd woken up and would be released by the end of the week, but nobody had visited him and nobody was planning to.

She handed the clipboard back to the nurse, who pointed at one of the doors and said "He's in that room. Visits for non-family are limited to fifteen minutes."

"Thanks." She walked to the door and paused.

_Dean, Emma_, she told herself. _Be like Dean_.

She knocked; no reply. She knocked again, and Damon yelled, "I'm not talking to you, Dad!"

Well. He was awake, at least.

She opened the door.

"Oh," Damon said. "You."

"Me," she agreed. "I heard you were awake."

"Yeah."

He was lying on the bed, with tubes taped to his wrist rather tightly, like he had pulled them out before.

She pulled a chair up to the end of his bed. "You drugged me."

"I didn't want you messing things up."

"Oh, of course, because I would mess things up."

"Yeah, you're a-" He caught himself, and glared at the curtains.

"Monster?" Emma smiled. _Civil, be civil._ "Believe it or not, not all of us are the same."

Damon laughed, bitter and angry. "Yeah right."

Emma propped her feet on the edge of the bed. "So who'd you lose? Your sister? Your best friend? Your mom?"

Damon flinched. Emma nodded. "Your mom, then. What killed her?"

"She wasn't a victim," he said, voice tight.

"Hunter, then. She took on something too big."

Damon didn't respond.

"She's not coming back, Damon." He met her eye. "Killing every monster out there won't bring her back." It sounded like a kindness, advice that he shouldn't throw away his life, something Sam would say, but they both knew better. What she meant was, _Don't kill me, I'm not worth it_.

"How would you know?"

Emma took her feet down off the bed and sat up. "Because Heaven's closed off and it's not opening back up, and Hell's more chaotic than ever. Purgatory's getting harder and harder to get out of. She's not coming back," she repeated, the same as how she'd heard Sam tell Dean once. "You're fighting a war but you're never gonna win it, so stop fighting."

"You're a monster, of course you want me to stop."

Ah yes, perfect hunter logic. Emma was a monster, she wasn't human, she could never be human. Of course she hated hunters.

She leaned in. "I want all of my family dead. The monsters, anyway. But there are already people looking for them, there are people hunting every monster out there. It's not your job-"

She was interrupted by a knock at the door. Damon froze visibly and Emma turned. It was an older man, also African-American, with the same angry glare Damon loved to use. Emma wondered how much he'd heard, and then, how much he knew. How much Damon didn't want him to know. His father did not look happy, to say the least; not that she cared, but it was nice to know she wasn't the only one with "daddy issues".

Emma stood up. "I'm going now," she announced to the room.

* * *

><p>Sam called her as she left the hospital.<p>

"_Hola_."

"You told him?"

So the angel had finally found his Winchesters.

"I didn't have a choice, Sam. This kid went up against a nest of vampires alone, I barely got him out of there alive. He was going to die."

"You said he'd healed you before. Why couldn't you-"

"He wouldn't heal Damon unless I told him. He reads minds, did you know that? He knew about the vampires, he knew Damon was a hunter. He knew that I knew what he was, he just wanted me to tell him!"

"So you told him. Dammit, Emma!"

"You're the one who told me I should try being – I dunno – _human_! That's what humans do, they save lives!"

"Yeah, but-"

"Oh, now he's on your ass, that's what's going on. Only Winchesters are worth saving, right?"

"I never said that."

"Sam, I have homework to do. If you want to blame me, go right ahead. If you're gonna chew my ass off for doing something, then goodbye." She hung up, shoved her phone in her pocket and walked away from the hospital. Stupid boys who wouldn't listen to her, always had to attack and criticize like Dean always did and they never gave her a damn break and-

_Stop that_, she told herself. You're better than that.

Better than them. All of them.

She found herself on a street corner, unsure of where to go. James was gone, Damon was in the hospital and hated her. Tammy, one of her roommates, had drawn a star on the whiteboard on their door, a sign not to come in.

She decided to walk back to campus. Somewhere, anywhere.

* * *

><p>Sam tossed his phone down on the table and sat down.<p>

Dean was gone. He'd taken the Impala and drove off to – somewhere, Sam didn't know. They'd had a fight that rivaled the ones they'd had that year, so long ago, when Dean wouldn't talk about Hell and Sam was hooked on demon blood. Ugly words, ugly emotions kept bottled up only to spill over.

Not for the last time, Sam was glad he was the only one who could hold a grudge longer than a week. Dean would come back. They'd both come back. They always did.

* * *

><p>Jason Williams shut the door before he spoke. "Who was that?"<p>

Damon turned his head towards the windows; he refused to make eye-contact. "A friend."

"A friend who knows about monsters?" Damon's father scoffed. "I knew it, I knew you'd find more of them, self-obsessed self-destructive-"

"It's my life, dad! I'm an adult, I can choose my own friends!"

Damon's father set his duffel bag on the ground and sat in the chair where Emma had been seated moments before.

"Damon, I'm worried about you. I've been worried about you since your mother died-"

"Killed, Dad! She was killed!" He never said she'd been killed, never placed the blame for her death at anyone but her own feet.

Jason sighed. "Damon, please. I don't want you to go the same way she did."

"I can't die the same way she did. The Leviathans are all gone-"

"You know what I mean." Damon's dad rubbed his face and sighed again. "Maybe you should take a year. Come home, get a job, talk to your old friends more. College will wait for you."

"I don't want to be in college, Dad. I want-"

"You'll come home for the holidays," Jason Williams interrupted, "And we'll talk about it then."

Damon laughed bitterly. Sure, they would. And when he came home, his dad wouldn't let him go back to college, and Damon would lose whatever independence he had.

"If you want me to choose between home and college, I choose college."

"I hate to do this, Damon, but you're an adult and I can't help you more than this." Damon's dad picked up his duffel and walked to the door, and turned back to face his son. "You come home for Christmas or you're not coming home again."

And he left.


End file.
